Alien Holiday by Tracy Lauren
Chapter 3
Lo
“So, who’d you get in the Secret Santa drawing?” April asks, her grin wide behind her mug.
“Nope, nope, nope! No ruining the surprise!” Holly warns.
“How do you know anyone here even got your name?” April counters.
“I don’t want to know any of it!”
“Are you saying you aren’t going to try and guess? Everyone’s going to be passing out gifts. You think you aren’t going to draw a single conclusion?”
“Drawing conclusions is completely different from…insider information. I want Christmas morning to be a surprise, thank you very much.”
“Yeah, I want something to look forward to on Christmas,” Mel agrees.
“Boo. What about you, Lo?”
I shrug, staring into my mug. “I don’t know. Christmas morning wasn’t such a big deal for me growing up.”
“You didn’t celebrate Christmas?” Holly seems saddened by the thought.
“No, we celebrated. It’s just Christmas Eve was always the bigger deal. All the family would come over, there’d be a huge meal.” I laugh thinking about the massive spread—we could have fed a village. “In the morning we’d joke about being hungover from the food alone. Yeah, Christmas Day was all about recovering.”
“Hungover from eating?” April questions.
“Well, we’d be hungover from all the booze too. But we’d blame the food.”
My smile must be a particularly wistful one because the girls all give me sad looks. I shake myself from my thoughts and force a little brightness into my smile.
“What kind of food would you have? Turkey? Ham?” Holly asks. She thinks about eating nearly as much as I do. Now this is a conversation worth diving into.
“Pozole, tamales, posadas, buñuelos, ponche…the list could go on and on! All my tías had a specialty.”
“The only word I caught there was tamale,” April admits.
“I’ve had tamales before! They’re good!” Holly declares.
“Oh yeah? Someone in your family make them?”
“No, I got them from El Pollo Loco.”
“Oh yeah! El Pollo Loco!” April says excitedly. “I’ve had El Pollo Loco tamales!”
I fall back in my seat. What kind of blasphemy is this? Tamales from a fast food restaurant? My abuelita would die. If a white-haired Mexican lady didn’t make it, it almost doesn’t even count as a tamale.
“Is El Pollo Loco not good?” Holly asks timidly. I can tell she thinks she’s offended me.
“Oy pues. I mean, it’s better than nothing.” No it’s not. It’s worse than nothing.
“Why don’t you make some tamales this year? Or…what were some of the other things? Tostadas?”
I bite my tongue. Tostadas. “Honestly, if it isn’t like mi abuelita Carmen made it, I think it would just make me sad. The masa and the seasoning are so important and we just don’t have that kind of stuff here.”
“I get it,” Holly tells me with sad eyes and confidence. “I miss candy canes.”
I fight the urge to make a face. Candy canes couldn’t hold a candle to some authentic tamales! Not on Earth, or any other world. But Holly is trying to make me feel understood, so I force a smile to my face and let her pat my hand comfortingly.
“Candy canes, fuzzy slippers, Christmas trees…” Holly says wistfully, thinking of all the things that made Christmas special back in her old life.
“Food, mi familia, tradiciones, the peregrinaciones…” I add.
“Is that another food?”
I smile and shake my head before sipping at my ceata. These girls are like hermanas to me, there’s no denying that. But there are certain things they just don’t get—cultural things, that are a deep and integral part of my identity. I might be human like them, but in a lot of ways I still feel isolated here—the only Latina on a backwater planet.